Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino in Post X alerted the cryptocurrency space to another wave of supply chain email scams. The CEO urged the community to remain extremely cautious until the problem is resolved.

Exciting news: it’s a scam!

On Wednesday, reports of suspicious emails being sent to the crypto community surfaced online. According to reports, investors have received emails from crypto companies offering an upcoming token airdrop.

First, users received emails from Bitfinex announcing “exciting news” about the exchange. The email revealed an upcoming ERC20 airdrop of their “new $BFX token” to all Bitfinex users. The reason for the airdrop was the recent approval of spot ETFs (ETFs).

The email included a “Collect Now” link that redirected to a website asking to connect to the user’s wallet. Despite the suspicious appearance of the email, investors doubted its legitimacy because it came from the official address of a crypto platform.

After community testing, it quickly turned out that the similar site was a scam site. User X tested page with an empty wallet and found they were “not eligible” for the airdrop.

However, the user tried the watch-only feature of Rabby Wallet with VB Wallet. The user stated that all ETH “would be sent to another wallet, so there was no airdrop for vb.” The target wallet was empty, suggesting that the scam generated a fresh wallet for each victim.

The user confirmed the theory after testing it with a second wallet. Such tactics would make it complex to track the number of victims and the financial resources involved.

Likewise several users reported receiving strange emails from Coinbase asking you to verify secondary addresses. The racist email stated that the cryptocurrency exchange had been closed and stated that all funds would be forfeited if they did not verify their second email address for withdrawal authorization.

The email also came from an official Coinbase address. However, the message was unauthorized because the sender used racist slurs and insulted himself.

Paolo Ardoino warns against ongoing cryptocurrency scams

Tether and Bitfinex CEO Paolo Ardoino took X to address situation. In its post, Ardoino revealed that it had received reports from two independent sources confirming that a top provider used by crypto companies had experienced a security breach.

The provider, which has not been named, manages the mailing lists of several essential crypto companies. Similarly, CoinGecko COO Bobby Ong warned users of an ongoing supply chain email attack targeting the community:

Massive emails announcing the launch of bogus tokens may affect several cryptocurrency companies. Be careful when using email newsletters in the coming days.

Despite the impact of the Ong breach assured users that the CoinGecko website and mobile application have not been affected and are sheltered to employ. He further clarified that the cryptocurrency tracking site is not launching a token nor had any plans to do so.

It is worth noting that this is not the first case of an email supply chain attack that has targeted the crypto industry. In January, a massive phishing campaign deprived investors of approximately $600,000 after the scammer sent unauthorized emails from various cryptocurrency-related companies.

It was then revealed that the first point of compromise had become a member of the customer service team of the vendor being used. At the time of writing, there are no official reports yet on affected users or lost funds.

Featured image from Unsplash.com, chart from TradingView.com